A century ago, in a misconceived encounter on the history-soaked
precipices of Asia Minor, the sons of Anzac received their battle
initiation against the German-trained forces of the Ottoman Empire.

Now, in an annual event that grows in mythology and status in
proportion to the passing of the years, is celebrated the shared
combat ordeal of gallant "Johnny Turk" and the Bronzed Anzac.

And why not? The Turkish forces, well prepared behind excellent
defences, used their tactics to good effect, ably led by a professional
officer who was to go on to bigger things, such as the fire destruction
of Smyrna - namely, Kemal Ataturk.

But, pause for one moment to consider a slightly different scenario.

Let us suspend historical reality for the purposes of this exercise.

What if, say, instead of Gallipoli, the Anzac forces were going into
combat with an SS Battalion somewhere in Poland during the Second
World War? Would we then, decades later, be joining up with our
comrades in battle to celebrate what both sides had gone through,
our enmities forgotten? Can one commemorate the shared experiences
with enemy forces who acted as the military arm of a state carrying
out a terrible genocide at the same time?

For it was the night before the landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915
in the capital of the Ottoman Empire, then called Constantinople,
when occurred the arrest, detention and subsequent liquidation of
625 intellectuals, priests and leading figures of the Armenian Empire.

This event is widely held to signal the onset of the first major
genocide of the twentieth century, the most blood-drenched period in
human history.

What followed was a mass murder of an entirely innocent group of
citizens in the Ottoman Empire by means that are still horrifying to
contemplate. By the time Turkey sued for peace in 1918, up to 1.5
million Armenians had been slaughtered, decimating the population
of a group of people who had lived in the Fertile Crescent since the
dawn of human settlement.

And it did not stop there. The Assyrian people suffered at least 75,000
victims, three-quarters of their population; the numbers have not been
made up to this day. Later the Greeks in Asia Minor, in some of the
bloodiest scenes of city sacking since the fall of Nineveh and Tyre,
were driven out of ancient homelands, never to return. And, largely
lost in the high tide of bloodletting at the time, there were pogroms
of Jewish settlements in Anatolia.

We have made our peace with the genocidal German and Japanese foes
of the Second World War (there is no way the unrestrained butchery of
the inhabitants of Manchuria, to say nothing of the Rape of Nanking,
would not constitute a genocide). They have (at least partially,
in the case of the Japanese) acknowledged their roles as aggressors
and in the genocide (at least in the German case; the Austrians are
still hoping their role will be forgotten). But we still would not
ask the SS battalions to join us on Anzac Day parades.

This is right and the way it should be.

Yet these qualms do not trouble us in fostering our war links with
the Turkish people - still led by the political descendants of
the Ittihadist Party that planned, organised and carried out the
Anatolian genocides.

Part of the reason for this is wilful ignorance. The Turkish government
vigorously enforces an official policy of denial, maintaining it as
the duty of their diplomatic staff abroad to engage in a well-funded
campaign of disinformation and protest should anyone publically state
anything to the contrary.

Genocide denied is an extension of the genocide perpetuated and an
ongoing crime against human rights.

Turkish nationalism, which runs coeval with its policy of genocide
denial, remains the last outpost of unreconstructed pre-Second World
War racial nationalism.

Johnny Turk, by all accounts, was a brave fighter when well led and
supported (which was often not the case), but can we separate the
soldiers from their officers, leaders, politicians and bureaucrats
who at the same time were engaged in exterminating an entire group of
people - especially when that same state, a century later, continues
to defile the memory of these victims by refusing to admit that the
slaughter even occurred?

So when we celebrate the Anzac spirit, let us remember that they were
fighting for freedom, pure and simple, and a nation that insists on
covering up, if not extinguishing history, to escape its culpability
for genocide is not a nation with whom we can associate as equals. And
nor should we until they desist from their deceitful denial of the
awful truth of what their forces did to several million innocent and
unprotected peoples under their sway after that day in April 1915.

Let the Anzac ceremonies proceed with Johnny Turk - but be sure to
let them know what we know, will not forget and will not deny until
they face up to their culpability and can then re-join the ranks of
enemies of honour, if not the nations of the world.

Anzac Day, like Christmas and Easter, is a time of myths and legends. A persistent myth hangs off these words attributed to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, an Ottoman officer at Gallipoli and the founder of modern Turkey:

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives ... you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well.

British historian Jenny Macleod says these are the most frequently quoted words about Gallipoli. They are lovely words, whether in English translation or Turkish. Yet there is no strong evidence Ataturk said or wrote them. Their invention and promotion says far more about politics and diplomacy than it does about remembrance.

There have been many guesses about dates in the 1930s when the words might first have appeared. The official Turkish version is that Ataturk wrote them for his interior minister, Sukru Kaya, to use in a speech at Canakkale on March 18, 1934. (Kaya's other claims to fame include probable involvement in the Armenian genocide of 1915-18 and ethnic cleansing of Kurds in the 1930s).

Yet there is no evidence Kaya was even in Canakkale that day, let alone making speeches, and a book of his speeches published in 1937 includes no speech given anywhere on that day. A Kaya speech in 1931, given after speaking with Ataturk, clearly distinguishes between Turks and invaders.

Ataturk died in 1938. The famous words first appeared in Turkish in 1953 in the newspaper Dunya, in which the Kemalist (admirer of Ataturk) journalist Y. R. Onen interviewed Kaya. Kaya "recalled" Ataturk's words while Ataturk's remains were being moved to a new mausoleum and excited Kemalists thronged the streets of Ankara. Dunya and the then government wanted to gild the Ataturk legend against the possibility of a coup by Ismet Inonu, Kaya's old opponent and Ataturk's successor, but now out of power. The government was also trying to build its links to the West, Turkey having fought in the Korea War and joined NATO in 1952; conciliatory words towards former enemies would have made sense. The words had a fairly quiet quarter-century after 1953, although they appeared in Turkish and English on the Canakkale Martyr's Memorial completed in 1958 and were quoted in English to Australian battlefield tourists in 1960 and 1965. Then, in 1978, the semi-official Turkish Historical Society published a booklet (in Turkish and English) called Ataturk and the Anzacs, which recorded how the society's Ulug Igdemir had agreed with a Queensland Gallipoli veteran, Alan J. Campbell, that the English version looked better with the inclusion of the sentence beginning: "There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets."

Campbell led a committee building a Gallipoli memorial in Brisbane and preferred equal Johnnies and Mehmets on the plaque, rather than: "You [foreign soldiers] are lying side by side and in the bosom of the Mehmets," a more accurate translation of the Turkish. A version with that translation is still common and, as late as 2010, a Kemalist politician complained that making Johnnies and Mehmets equal was an affront to Ataturk; the relevant Turkish minister brushed the objection aside.

By 2010, the doctored version had been diplomatically preferred for 25 years. In 1984-85, Turkey agreed to rename part of its Ari Burnu area as "Anzac Cove" - in return for Australia calling part of Lake Burley Griffin "Gallipoli Reach" and water at Albany (Western Australia) "Ataturk Channel" as well as constructing the Ataturk Memorial in Canberra's Anzac Parade, carrying the words over Ataturk's name. The Canberra memorial was dedicated on Anzac Day, 1985, the same day a memorial carrying the same words over the same name was dedicated at Anzac Cove. In both cases, Johnnies and Mehmets were equal, thanks to Campbell and Igdemir, but they had just added a gloss to Kaya's imaginative 1953 original.

The Turkish ambassador in Canberra, Faruk Sahinbas, drove the deal hard, under pressure from the chief of the Turkish army, General Urug (who directed that the "Those heroes" words be included), and probably president Kenan Evren. They all wanted to build ties with Western countries following Turkey's return to democracy after military rule, and they fervently supported a renewed national commitment to Kemalism, which saw Ataturk's name, likeness and ideology proliferate in Turkey at the time.

Cementing the Ataturk myth in Canberra was not easy, however. Early on Sahinbas had considered asking Australia to rename Mount Ainslie as "Mount Ataturk"; later, the two sides discussed renaming part of Limestone Parade as "Ataturk Avenue". As the Australian side dithered - it was distracted by the December 1984 election - the Turks even thought of paying for the Anzac Parade memorial themselves (as they did for an Ataturk memorial in Wellington, New Zealand, unveiled last month). Eventually, prime minister Bob Hawke, having made promises to Australian veterans about the Anzac Cove renaming, pushed hard to have the memorial in place by Anzac Day. The "Ataturk words" in Anzac Parade and elsewhere are almost certainly Kaya's - or possibly the journalist Onen's - embroidered by Campbell and Igdemir and assiduously pushed by the Turks onto gullible or indifferent Australians. Since 1985, a sentimental joint attachment to the bloody story of Gallipoli, plus Australian-Turkish diplomatic requirements, have discouraged governments, the commemoration and battlefield tour industries, and some historians, from digging deeper. Now, we have what translation expert Anthony Pym called "a paroxysm of monuments and plaques [and websites], all reinforcing each other, with a certitude that creates its own history".

The "those heroes" words (with Brisbane-added equal Johnnies and Mehmets) have brought comfort to many, but our yearning for comfort has been abused. The words are essentially a confidence trick, and the people most taken in are the bright-eyed children who are pushed forward every Anzac season to recite them.

David Stephens is co-editor of The Honest History Book , from which this article is drawn. For details, visit "Talking Turkey" page at honesthistory.net.au.

By 2010, the doctored version had been diplomatically preferred for 25 years.